Realizing the right to land is critical to addressing current interlinked crises

Land along with other natural resources are the very basis of life for communities worldwide, who are at the same time the best guardians of those ecosystems. However, corporate control over land and natural resources is at the core of today’s dominant economic model, which has triggered a new wave of land grabs, speculation, and land concertation, leading to massive dispossession and ecosystem destruction. People’s organizations have been fighting for the right to land, thus achieving some important milestones such as the Tenure Guidelines. However, in the face of the multiple interconnected crises that are affecting millions worldwide, ensuring the equitable distribution of land needs to be at the center of public and climate policies.

Land concentration is at the core of the multiple environmental, social and economic crises we face today. Over the past two decades, a global land rush has led to high levels of accumulation of wealth in the hands of a few and the increasing power of financial actors, leading to massive dispossession of communities from their territories, ecosystem destruction and unsustainable levels of land concentration around the world.

To give some numbers, in the last ten years, international investors have carried out at least 1,865 large-scale land acquisitions (LSLC) for agriculture production alone, which comprise an area of 33 million hectares, the size of Italy or the Philippines. Moreover, recent research confirms what organizations of small-scale food producers and Indigenous peoples have denounced for a long time, namely that land inequality is even higher than official statistics indicate. 1% of farms worldwide control 70% of the farmland, while 50% of the poorest rural population use 3% of the land. Large-scale industrial agriculture feeds a global food system controlled by transnational corporations, which has failed to prevent consecutive food crises, leading to increasing levels of hunger and malnutrition.  

Historically, land and natural resources have been highly disputed and powerful actors have consistently accumulated land and natural resources in order to enforce domination, exclusion and exploitation, such as in the case of colonialism. However, the current levels of land concentration are a key indicator of profound structural inequalities, oppression and discrimination in our societies, which are at the core of the current interconnected crises. 

Furthermore, land, along with natural resources such as oceans, rivers and forests, are the very basis of life for peasant communities, Indigenous Peoples, small-scale fishers, pastoralists, and forest people. They do not only provide means of sustenance through food production, but fulfil crucial social, cultural, spiritual and ecological functions. At the same time, these communities play a key role in sustaining localized food systems, which feed more than 70% of the world’s population; and make a crucial contribution to protecting the ecosystems, cooling the planet and conserving biodiversity. 

The current levels of land concentration are a key indicator of profound structural inequalities, oppression and discrimination in our societies, which are at the core of the current interconnected crises.

Credit: Quang Nguyen Vinh

This is why, in the face of such an emergency, organizations of small-scale food producers, Indigenous Peoples, small-scale fishers, pastoralists, forest people and civil society have come together to claim the centrality of the right to land in public and climate policies, and demand the inclusion of agrarian reform as part of the solutions to the environmental, social and economic crises.  

For this purpose, in May 2022, this alliance of organizations issued an international statement named “We Belong to the Land”, which pinpoints the importance of bringing back the land to the communities that sustain and protect their territories and ecosystems, contributing to more just and sustainable food systems.  

Publishing this series on Land Struggles also aims to bring the right to land back to the political agenda. The case studies on this website showcase people’s struggles for their lands, fisheries and forests, and underline the international and national mechanisms and strategies that can be used to defend the right to land. Finally, they illustrate how realizing the right to land is a core part of achieving today’s most pressing larger systemic transformation.   

The We Belong to the Land statement and the Land Struggles Series is another contribution to people’s long struggles for their lands, oceans, rivers, forests, and nature-based ways of living. In the past, these struggles have resulted in increased recognition of the inextricable connection between their territories and human rights. Land has been recognized as a human right in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas (UNDROP) and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). 

The We Belong to the Land statement and the Land Struggles Series is another contribution to people’s long struggles for their lands, oceans, rivers, forests, and nature-based ways of living.

Furthermore, in May 2012, social organizations applauded the adoption of the Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests (Tenure Guidelines) by the Committee on World Food Security (CFS), which provide detailed guidance on how states are supposed to implement their human rights obligations and guarantee everyone’s rights to land and other natural resources, with a special focus on vulnerable communities.  

The implementation of these guidelines has not been a straightforward process and ten years later many of the structural drivers of dispossession persist. Popular pressure, mobilization, training and organization are the components that give life to such policy documents and make them relevant in the search for bottom-up societal change. This is why the International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty (IPC) prepared a People’s Manual and a Learning Guide to help social movements, Indigenous Peoples’ and civil society organizations to use the Guidelines to advance their struggles, such as in the case of Mali.  

However, most of the programs implemented by governments and international institutions, including the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), have tended to focus on technical approaches and measures without addressing the structural causes of dispossession, land concentration, and ecosystem destruction, such as the case of the failed agrarian reform in Colombia after the Peace Agreement of 2016.

The implementation of the Tenure Guidelines has not been a straightforward process and ten years later many of the structural drivers of dispossession persist.

Farmer in India. / Brazil Topno

The IPC Working Group on Land, Forest, Water and Territories attributes the Tenure Guidelines’ failure to produce transformative change thus far to three main issues:  

1. Lack of prioritizing marginalized groups, as stated in paragraph 1.1 of the Tenure Guidelines. Instead, governments have often pursued policies that promote corporate land deals and market-based approaches, thus undermining communities’ and people’s control over their lands, fisheries, forests, and territories.

2. Structural issues have rarely been addressed. States, international institutions and some non-governmental organizations have tended to apply a narrow interpretation of land tenure, focusing on “access to land”, without considering interrelated human rights, including the right to food and nutrition and women’s and youth’s rights. Moreover, tenure is predominantly viewed as “private property” and as an individual right, instead of a social right that protects community and customary tenure systems to ensure equitable distribution of land and sustainable use of natural resources.

3. Failure to apply a human rights framework consistently in tenure governance as well as in policies across sectors. Land, agriculture, fisheries, investment, trade, finance, climate change and biodiversity are intertwined issues and need to be addressed in a comprehensive manner, using a human rights-based approach.

The realization of the right to land and the implementation of the Tenure Guidelines have also been constrained by long-standing and new-found challenges, which have generated compounding, interrelated crises. Specifically, the financialization of land and other common resources following the 2008 global economic crisis has resulted in a wave of land –grabbing and dispossession. Communities have lost access and control over their territories to the benefit of powerful corporations, financial players and ultra-wealthy individuals.  

The effects of climate change and market-based false solutions (such as carbon offsets, geoengineering, blue carbon, ‘nature-based solutions’ etc.) have further undermined communities’ right to land. Moreover, tenure and local food systems have been disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic and armed conflict, thus exacerbating hunger and malnutrition. Simultaneously, criminalization of land rights defenders is on the rise, especially under neoliberal and far-right governments.   

Digitalization in the context of land and natural resources also poses new threats to people’s and communities’ right to land, perpetuating dynamics of exclusion, dispossession, and land concentration. The large-scale application of corporate-led digitalization opens the floodgates to the financialization and end-to-end control of agricultural value chains by conglomerates of agribusiness and BigTech companies.  

Long-standing and new-found challenges have generated compounding, interrelated crises that severely impact people’s right to land and other related rights for a dignified livelihood.

Indigenous woman in Sri Lankan picking tea.

All the described realities and dynamics strongly indicate that a profound transformation is needed to make the world’s economies and food systems more just and sustainable. Realizing the right to land is paramount for achieving this objective. This entails effectively securing people’s tenure rights, in particular collective and/or customary tenure systems, as well as ensuring an equitable distribution of land through agrarian reforms.  

Normative guidance as contained in UNDROP, UNDRIP and the Tenure Guidelines should be used to overcome the structural factors underlying social inequality and ecological destruction. Realizing the right to land and implementing human rights-based governance of natural resources will pave the way for bottom-up, people-centered solutions for sustainable, healthy, and just social and economic models.  

Therefore, the signatories of the We Belong to the Land statement issued a set of key demands to states and the United Nations system to advance food sovereignty and its transformative potential to build a world in which the rights of all people to adequate, healthy and culturally appropriate food are realized. Namely: 

1. Respect, protect and guarantee communities’ tenure rights, including collective and customary systems.
   
2. End global latifundia and promote a just and sustainable distribution of land and natural resources.
   
3. Impede the capturing of land and territories by corporate and financial actors. 
4. End the structural discrimination faced by women, youth and other disadvantaged groups. 
5. Cancel illegitimate and unsustainable debt.  
6. Make agrarian reform a centerpiece of climate change and biodiversity policies.  
7. Ensure that land-related digitalization respects human rights and guarantees people’s control over their data and territories.  
8. Protect communities and groups who collectively defend their land and ecosystems.   

Furthermore, they call upon the FAO to take the lead in organizing another International Conference on Agrarian Reform, in order to coordinate a global response to the increasing and unsustainable levels of concentration of land and natural resources in the hands of a few powerful actors. 

Realizing the right to land is paramount to make the world’s economies and food systems just and sustainable. Normative guidance as contained in UNDROP, UNDRIP and the Tenure Guidelines should be used to overcome the structural factors underlying social inequality and ecological destruction.